The main idea behind Weekly Answer Writing Challenges is to
make your exam preparation more result oriented. For this exam (UPSC Civil
Services), just ‘reading’ is not enough. The most advantageous part of this
writing exercise is to make your answer visible to everyone, someone may correct
you if they find a mistake in your answer plus it must be also supported by our
experts , you may see others answers also. It is free and definitely will
improve your writing ability and marks in your final examination. Here all
topics from syllabus will be covered.

Public Administration- Paper I "Syllabus Topic – Public Policy : Models of
policy-making and their critique"

Q2. "Discuss the performance of Indian
Parliament after independence. What are the Parliamentary privileges given
to Members of Parliament in India?"

Model Answer :

The performance of the Parliament from being an ideal
platform to express dissent and adequate participation of both the Government
and opposition during Nehru’s times has slowly degenerated over a period of
time. The initial parliamentarians were all scholars and experts in their
domains and hence brought qualitative discussions to the table. Over time, the
Members of Parliament are predominantly Generalists who lack technical knowledge
needed in the domain of policy making and hence mostly stay quiet. During Indira
Gandhi’s time, the Indian Parliament reach a plummet, where to confront an
uneasy opposition an emergency was declared, many opposition members were
arrested and basic fundamental rights were curtailed. In the years following
there has always been stiff resentment by the opposition that reduces the pace
of functioning of the parliament. Thereafter Parliament has turned into a
battlefield with the tradition of non-cooperation with opposition and
Parliamentary standards have declined drastically over the past couple of
decades.

Art 105 of the Indian Constitution provides for power and
privileges of the Houses of Parliament. Constitution grants these privileges
with a view to maintaining the independence of action and dignity of the
position of the House of Parliament, their Committee and members and to enable
them to function without any hindrance.

The privileges to Members of Parliament are following :-

1. Freedom of speech in Parliament which is most imp of all
the privileges. It is absolute in nature unlike freedom guaranteed under Art 19
1(a) which is subjected to reasonable restriction. Such privilege is granted so
that members may express their views upon any policy subject without any fear or
inhibitions.

2. No member shall be liable to any proceeding in any court w.r.t anything
said or done inside the Parliament and no person shall be so liable in respect
of any publication under authority of the House of the Parliament.

3. The Parliament may define privileges for the members time to time by
suitable legislation.